Loki X Reader || Girl With The Gold Earring

8 | Jam

Loki excused Y/N from the last of her chores, leading her to his studio right away.

He still guided her there, showing her the way like a gentleman, and he'd continue to treat it as her first time visiting even on her hundredth. And he still had that annoying habit of holding the door open for her, sweeping an arm to guide her into the cosy little space in mid-air as if combing the entrance for cobwebs he didn't want to get stuck in her hair.

These things didn't make Y/N's innards knot in on themselves as much as they used to, she realised. Her cheeks would still go a bashful pink, her demeanour like a rose too shy to bloom, but that is all. That should have tied Y/N's insides into a tight bow---the realisation that she's getting used to a lifestyle miles above her station---but it didn't. Not while she was with the prince, anyway. A claw of self-consciousness would run itself down her spine, but he'd effortlessly bat it away. A voice deep in her head would whisper that she's an imposter, that she should be holding doors open for him; but Loki would swat it from her mind as though it were merely an annoying insect.

The prince didn't make (well, let) Y/N stay so late, this time. She noticed his eyes keep sliding to the window, mapping the space between the sinking sun and the hard line of the horizon. He'd probably mentally marked a dash on the sky, a specific time he planned to make her leave, even if she wanted to stay. She told him that that wasn't necessary, she'd happy to remain by his side and help him make all the paint he needs, but he'd waved off her words, having none of it.

"I'd prefer to stay here. I don't even mind missing dinner," Y/N had said lightly, currently working a stubborn lump from a purple powder so dark it was almost black. "Ylva is making---what she calls---kroppkakor again tonight. Last time she did that, half the servants got sick." She'd said it to try to make the prince laugh, to make the corners of his eyes do that crinkly thing she has become so bafflingly fond of, but it, instead, had the opposite effect.

He'd paused mid-way through cracking an egg into a bowl, the white tumbling out with the yolk in a gooey, unsupervised globule. The prince didn't seem to notice. Or care. "Really?"

"Yes. We think she didn't cook the meat for long enough---or maybe she just didn't want to fork out for a good cut." Then, feeling remorseful for dragging one of her superior's names through the mud, Y/N added: "Or maybe she couldn't afford a good cut."

Sounding surprisingly concerned: "Do you not eat well in the servant's quarters?"

Y/N pondered her response carefully. On the one hand, the prince's family pay for the culinary services she would be describing; so she'd have to tread carefully as not to sound ungrateful. On the other hand, the prince---for some reason---seems to have taken some kind of interest in Y/N, so it would feel wrong to lie. She wouldn't be able to lie convincingly anyway; not about Ylva's cooking. Just mentioning it brought the familiar sharpness of too much salt to Y/N's tongue. Her taste buds retreated, pulling her expression into a tight grimace.

After some contemplation and various shuffling and re-shuffling of words:

"We get what we need. It's different down there to up here; more practical. We get enough food, it's just not usually very nice."

"And sometimes makes everyone ill." Loki was now trying to scoop the yellow orb of the egg yolk from the white with a spoon. His brows were still tightly knitted over the ridge of his nose at this new---and to him, slightly horrifying---information. "Can't a better chef be hired?"

Y/N didn't want to say the word 'afford', not twice in the same conversation, so she stayed quiet. The prince seemed to know what this meant because he dropped the subject, and the matter of Y/N's meagre diet was not picked up again.